If you are a new reader of our dropship website you might be interested how we choose products for our research to define if they are good candidates for your home based business or dropship eBay business. The choice depends on the demand.

OK, after this short introduction to dropshiparea.com website let’s turn to researching another potential product for your home business – scooter dropship. My first questions are – seasonality, market and demand volume as the price is relatively high (compared to other products like candle, pet apparel or dvd’s). Google Insights for Search is here to help us –you can clearly see the seasonal nature of the product You get more valuable info through this source – the top scooter markets:

Now I would like to have a look at my online competition – in my case I prefer to run dropship business through my websites (not eBay), so I need to see how much competition I have in general and who are top players in SEO & PPC. For that purpose I need a deeper keyword research to make sure I use a commercial keyword (we can check that with MSN online commercial intention tool).

Now it is time to learn something about our potential customers. Google Insights for Search is good to see the top markets for this or that product. Quantcast and MSN are helpful to get a more detailed description of out target audience.

You can browse available merchants by category if you have subscribed to any of the below product sourcing providers. I prefer two sources – SaleHoo and WorldWide Brands (they provide lots of cool extras like In-Built Market Research that is a good starting point for your own product research and a valuable addition to my researches of products). OK, what we see is:

Description: They are located in New York and are an importer of scooters. They carry a full line of gas and electric scooters as well as large amount sorts of scooter parts…

Now you have collected some initial information about online scooter market, competition and demand, suppliers and target audience. I tend to compare that information to other product research results and my past personal experience. There are much more factors that define your dropship product selection – free resources (time, money, personal likings, etc.)

Assuming you have done a proper research for a product that you would like to give a try to dropship pet apparel. Some samples of product research are available here (they are sort of starting points and in no way recommendations to dropship those product categories):

So, you have defined a product category to dropship – pet apparel. Next step in your e-commerce business plan is likely to be setting up relations with pet apparel dropshippers. This is an important step.

Contacting local dealers – this option greatly depends on your location. Not every place has a number of pet apparel wholesalers that you can reach out… And not every local pet apparel wholesaler is familiar with dropshipping business model. Though most wholesalers will easily get the idea most will decline your offer – they would need to make change to their business processes and paperwork and your volume of sale (from their point) would not compensate their efforts.

Your own online research of available pet apparel dropshippers – the idea is simple. You go to your favorite search engine and type ‘pet apparel dropshippers’. Your first impression – wow, thousands of pet apparel dropshipper listings to choose from. Once you browse through 20-30 listings you are less enthusiastic – many unrelated information, many listings of some poor quality products offered by some unknown companies… It does not mean that all hose thousands of listings are complete garbage – there are real dropshippers, but the question is how to define and verify those real dropshippers – reliable, with competitive prices and good reputation.

Applying to verified dropship sourcing providers – probably the easiest way to start your pet appareldropship business. Those product sources are familiar with dropshipping and ready to fulfill your orders on the one hand; on the other hand those companies were verified by some third party and you can be confident that it is not some sort of scam Where do you find those listings of verified pet apparel dropshippers? You can see a few selected lists compared here

Today we will have a look at dropshipping skateboards. Skateboards no doubt meet our initial requirement – good online sellers – people buy this product online and they do not need to touch or smell it (though we know that everything sells online now).

About 2 000 keywords. Not that huge as we wished to see it, but quite big. You should keep in mind that keyword tools do not provide 100% exact information. Another point to remember – many searches are of browsing nature and only some tiny share of search phrases are of buying kind.

Google Insights For Search say that there is a gradual decline of ’skateboard’ searches over time with the primary product market still in the United States (yes, this tool is great to define key markets and top searches in addition to the general demand trend).

How do you check competition? Most keyword research tools provide this feature. Probably, the easiest way is to check the number of Google results returned for the term ‘skateboard’, but you need to compare it to something you are familiar with. And it makes sense to enter less general terms.

If you think of the lasting nature of the product it is likely to stay on the market.

What about skateboard dropship merchants? You need verified, reliable, competitively priced. A few sources that are worth your time include Salehoo, Worldwide Brands, Doba – you can see them compared here. Fast check shows that you will have a choice of suppliers:

Drop Ship Wholesalers

27

Light Bulk Wholesalers

36

Instant Import Buys

1

Liquidation Auctions

6

Our research is not a final answer to the question – should I give a try to dropship skateboards. It is sort of initial steps. You should make a much deeper research using your own extra techniques or applications available on the market similar to finding hot selling eBay goods or in-built market research tool